Newsline 19 July 2013

Newsline 19 July 2013

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News, Blogs & Opinion

Same-Sex Marriage legalised in England and Wales

News | Thu, 18th Jul 2013

The Same-Sex Marriage Bill has been given royal assent and is now law. However, the first marriage is unlikely to take place before next summer as the Government has promised an inquiry into pension inequality and other matters, including whether humanist marriage ceremonies should be legally recognised.

Catholic bishops have expressed anger at the passing of the legislation, saying that the Church could not accept it and that it compromised "religious freedom".

The Act, which applies to England and Wales, will enable same sex couples to marry in civil ceremonies. It will ensure that those religious organisations wishing to do so can opt in to marry same sex couples according to their rites.

It provides strong protection for religious organisations and their representatives from successful legal challenge if they do not wish to marry same sex couples. It will enable civil partners to convert their partnership to a marriage, if they wish. It will also enable individuals to change their legal gender without having to end their marriage.

There will be a review (including full public consultation) on whether to enable celebrant-based authorisation of marriages by belief organisations, to be published before 1 January 2015. There will also be a review (including full public consultation) of the operation and future of the Civil Partnership Act 2004 in England and Wales, to start as soon as practicable, and with a report on the outcome to be published.

Another review will examine current survivor benefits of occupational pension schemes (including consultation) with a report on the outcome to be published before 1 July 2014.

Non-Government amendments introduced by peers in the House of Lords aimed at diluting or damaging the bill or introducing even more religious opt-outs and privileges, were defeated. Demands that marriage registrars should be able to "opt-out" were thrown out as were those regarding how "faith schools" should approach teaching in sex education concerning the importance of marriage.

Meanwhile, a Yougov poll for Centre Ground on same-sex marriage among 1932 adults found that 54% of respondents supported the new law to make marriage available to gay people with only 36% opposed.

The same poll asked "Do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion?" A massive 42% said they did not regard themselves as belonging to any particular religion. This increased to 63% among the 18-24 year age group.

33% said they were CofE and 10% Catholic; 2% said they were Islamic with 1% each saying they were Sikh, Hindu or Jewish.

Woman claims Catholic pharmacist made her “feel like a murderer” when she asked for morning after pill

News | Thu, 18th Jul 2013

The General Pharmaceutical Council is conducting a misconduct hearing against a Polish Catholic pharmacist, who allegedly told a woman that she was "plotting murder" after she asked for the morning after pill.

Piotr Majchrowicz, who worked for Boots in Blyth Northumberland, also allegedly subjected the woman to a rant on the evils of abortion and his hard-line Catholic take on birth control. The young woman says he told her, "Ending a life is ending a life, so be it on your conscience."

Majchrowicz left his job in Boots in January 2012 after allegedly making the woman feel like a 'murderer'. Under GPC guidelines, any pharmacist exercising their "religious conscience" in refusing to dispense contraception is required to direct the customer to another pharmacy where the order will be fulfilled. Mr Majchrowicz failed to do this.

John Hepworth, who was representing the GPC, told the inquiry that the young woman (who cannot be identified for legal reasons) "...was told by the registrant that essentially what you are doing is a chemical abortion and you are ending a life. This was his regular practice. He was not at all sensitive to the patient who, by her own admission, was nervous and embarrassed when she came to seek the medication from him. There is no doubt that she was distressed. She had been made to feel like a 'murderer'".

After lecturing the young woman on the evils of contraception, Mr Majchrowicz eventually dispensed the pill but was "clearly reluctant to do so", the hearing was told.

Mr Majchrowicz told the hearing: that contraception can be regarded as "ending a life", a view, he says, that he shares.

The hearing continues. If the inquiry finds against him he could face being struck off the pharmaceutical register.

Extremism fears prompt Government to scupper plans for Islamic free school

News | Mon, 15th Jul 2013

The Department for Education has scuppered plans for an Islamic free school in Halifax after alarm was raised over its links with a local Islamic centre.

The decision follows a three-month investigation which was sparked after a local MP and Calderdale council's education committee expressed misgivings about the proposed Northern Lights school and its links to the Sunni Islamic Centre.

The Islamic centre had circulated a leaflet to Muslim parents telling them that their children could die if they failed to support the plans for the Northern Lights school. The leaflet read: "If it was said to us, 'If you do not attend this meeting your child will die,' I am certain we would all make sure we attend the meeting. What I am about to address... is even more serious than death and that is for us and our children to be safe on the Day of Judgment."

The school denied any responsibility for the leaflet but this did not allay the fears of Government ministers or local educationalists.

David Whalley, Calderdale council's Head of Learning, said: "The potential risk of a negative impact on community relations within the area is high".

The Department for Education said: "We judged that the capacity and capability of the group was not sufficient for the project to proceed."

Linda Riordan, MP for Halifax, who had called for the investigation, said: "This is a sensible decision, taking in the best interests of community cohesion and education provision in the town. It obviously took a lot of thought from the Minister, but it's the right thing to have done."

A Department for Education spokesperson said: "Setting up a free school is not an easy task. The proposers of the Northern Lights Free School have worked hard on their project. However, our priority has to be to open free schools with the best chance of performing strongly from the outset and giving children a first-class education.

"Unfortunately, in this case, we judged that the capacity and capability of the group was not sufficient for the project to proceed."

Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society, said: "I am pleased that the DfE's monitoring of extremism in free school applications has worked in this case, but I wonder how many other applications might have already been approved that were less than honest and will ultimately result in extremist religious groups using taxpayers' money to spread their beliefs among children?"

Mr Sanderson also pointed out the Sunni Centre was running its own "school", which was little more than an indoctrination centre. "There is little or no oversight of such schools or madrassas and given that the Sunni Centre was capable of sending out such an extremist document to parents, goodness knows that they're drumming into children behind closed doors. It is time that madrassas were brought under some kind of regulatory system. "

See also: "Boy hit by teacher at mosque told not to tell his mother"

UN marks “Malala Day”

News | Fri, 12th Jul 2013

Malala Yousafzai, the inspirational and courageous schoolgirl from Pakistan's north-western Swat valley, who was shot by the Taliban in October for campaigning in support of female education, addressed the United Nations in New York.

The speech, which marked Malala's 16th birthday and represented her first public address since she was attacked last year, called on all governments to ensure free compulsory education for every child around the world. The UN has declared the 12 July "Malala Day".

The event was organised by the UN special envoy for global education, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Malala addressed a delegation of nearly 1,000 students at the New York offices, saying to them: "Let us pick up our books and pens. They are our most powerful weapons".

"One child, one teacher, one pen and one book can change the world. Education is the only solution. Education first."

She noted that she was fighting for the rights of women, because "they are the ones who suffer the most". Of the Taliban who shot her, she said, "they are afraid of women".

Malala's speech comes within the context of a world in which, according to a UNESCO report just released, there are 57 million children globally not attending school, half of whom are living in countries affected by conflict.

Malala, who now lives in the UK and attends school here, has been listed as one of TIME Magazine's top 100 most influential people.

Following the assassination attempt on her life, Malala set up the Malala Fund to help provide education for all young people, with the first grant being provided by the Fund aimed at urging families in her home region of the Swat Valley to keep their daughters in education.

Malala's story sparked outrage around the world after the Taliban said it shot her for "promoting secularism", and in February this year, in her honour, the National Secular Society donated its Secularist of the Year prize fund of £7,000 to a global charity, Plan UK, campaigning to ensure girls everywhere have equal access to education.

A screening of Malala's address to the UN live from New York was held at the Southbank Centre, and a video of the address can be viewed here.

Nuns say they will contribute nothing to Magdalene Laundry survivors’ compensation

News | Tue, 16th Jul 2013

The four orders of nuns that ran the notorious Magdalene Laundries in Ireland have said they have no intention of contributing anything towards the compensation fund set up by the Irish Government.

The Mercy Sisters, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, the Sisters of Charity and the Good Shepherd Sisters told the Minister for Justice Alan Shatter that they will leave it to the taxpayer to pick up the bill and will pay nothing towards the compensation fund which could total €58 million.

They have said they will continue to look after elderly former residents who have not been able to find anywhere else to live — but that's all.

The Government announced the scheme last month after Mr Justice Quirke had inquired into the options available to compensate the women who had been incarcerated in the laundries and used as forced labour.

The minimum payment was €11,500 for women who spent three months or less in a laundry and the maximum approved was €100,000 for those who were residents for 10 years or more.

It is estimated that about 600 women will be eligible for compensation and they will not have to prove that they were abused or suffered hardship.

Mr Shatter said he had expected the four orders of nuns that had run the laundries on behalf of the state to contribute to the compensation, but didn't specify what he expected them to pay.

The scheme comes after years of campaigning by the survivors of the Magdalene Laundry system. The Irish Premier Enda Kenny gave an emotional apology to the victims in the parliament earlier this year, saying nobody should have had to endure the cruelty and degradation that the women in these institutions did.

The apology and compensation scheme was prompted by an investigation by former senator Martin McAleese into the Laundries, which operated for nearly a hundred years. The report condemned the state's role in allowing the Magdalene Laundries to continue and the religious orders for their cruelty and oppression of the women who were admitted.

Chief Executive of Barnardos, Fergus Finlay, told the Irish Examiner that the Government should call the religious orders to account. "I think these religious orders have to be called in — if necessary, publicly — and they have to be told that the government and the people of Ireland expect them to make a contribution."

Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society commented: "We hope that campaigners will remind the Irish Government that the 18 orders involved in the Magdalene Laundries made €667m in property deals between 1999 and 2009."

Recent Vatican announcements have been keen to stress the Pope's solidarity with the poor and marginalised.

See also: The Church owes the women of the Magdalene Laundries

See Peter Mullan's powerful film The Magdalene Sisters on Youtube

BBC reduces the amount of religion it broadcasts

News | Tue, 16th Jul 2013

The BBC has published its annual report which shows that the amount of time devoted to religion on the various BBC platforms has reduced over the past year.

In the 2012/2013 period BBC1 broadcast 99 hours of religion as opposed to 102 hours in the previous year. The only channel to show a rise in the number of hours of religious broadcasting was BBC2 which went up from 27 hours in the 2011/2012 period to 47 hours in the latest period.

BBC4 showed a significant drop from 53 hours last year to only 5 hours this year.

On BBC Radio the number of hours devoted to religion went down from 1,211 last year to 975 hours this year.

Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said: "It is good that the BBC is taking notice of its audiences at last — who according to its own research don't regard religion as an important genre and hardly ever watch it. This small reduction in hours is welcome, but it still represents an awful lot of religion."

Mr Sanderson said that it wasn't clear whether the BBC's figures included such things as the church service for Margaret Thatcher's funeral (which was broadcast in full) or the service of thanksgiving for the anniversary of the Queen's coronation. These appear to be extra to the official religious figures in the annual report.

Mr Sanderson said he welcomed a more imaginative approach to religion and a more critical examination of it. "It is impossible to ignore the part that religion is negative."

Edinburgh secularists challenge religious interference in schools

News | Wed, 17th Jul 2013

Edinburgh Secular Society has published full details of all 91 unelected religious representatives sitting on the education committees of Scotland's 32 local authorities.

The representatives are appointed after nomination by their local churches and have full voting rights on all educational issues coming before their local authority. Their expenses are paid for by council-tax payers. The undemocratic nature of the appointments has angered many elected officials.

In a significant number of areas of Scotland, these unelected representatives hold sway. Church of Scotland's Church and Society Council, in a report earlier this year to their General Assembly, claimed "We estimate that... Church Representatives hold the balance of power on 19 Local Authority Committees (of 32)."

The Local Government (Scotland) Act 1994 requires local authorities to appoint a representative of the Church of Scotland, an official from the Roman Catholic Church, and another religious figure to their education committees.

Edinburgh Secular Society has argued that continuing with this practice is damaging to local democracy in Scotland, and politics in general.

Patrick Harvie, MSP for Glasgow, said: "In a society in which increasing numbers of people don't practice any religion, it's high time that we questioned a practice which gives religious hierarchies an influence over every child's education. I'm particularly concerned at the involvement of people who would promote utterly unscientific notions like creationism; pushing this absurd ideology at children is the very opposite of education."

Bailie Dr Nina Baker, Glasgow City councillor (one of two Scottish Green Party seats on the city council's executive), told the ESS: "Whilst I can see that representatives of major world faiths might have a role in advising on curriculum content for the teaching of comparative religion in schools, I believe they should have no right to vote on councils' decision-making bodies. Those votes should be reserved for accountable, elected members only. A recent contribution from the Roman Catholic representative on Glasgow's executive was to make clear his church could never accept the principle and practice of shared-campus schools, a policy with full cross-party support."

Commenting on the presence of unelected religious representatives on local authority education committees, City of Edinburgh Councillor Sandy Howat added: "Unelected, unaccountable and I would suggest untenable? Undemocratic influence over public education is fundamentally at odds with the principles of respect, equality and shared freedoms. All contributions to committee deliberations should be welcomed, yet continued undemocratic privilege of the few over the many is an outdated tradition we should remove. As we look to create a fairer Scotland with liberty at its core, we need to ask ourselves what this 'privilege' says about our values; it's time for a new enlightenment."

Edinburgh Secular Society point out that the 'religious representative' placements are not open to those without any declared religious beliefs, nor to humanists, or to the many minority religious faith groups, as the law calls for representatives to have a recognised 'place of worship'.

Edinburgh Secular Society is calling on the Scottish Government to review the clause, with a view to removing it from the Act. The group also believes that it is not compliant with the Equality Act 2010.

Visit the Edinburgh Secular Society website

See the list of 91 unelected religious representatives sitting on Scotland's 32 local authority education committees (PDF)

Muslim man who ritually slaughtered goats didn’t know it was against the law

News | Thu, 18th Jul 2013

A Somali refugee who improvised a halal abattoir in a private house where he killed four goats, has been sentenced to a 12 months in jail suspended for two years by an Irish court.

Rashid Kibaga pleaded guilty to operating an unlicensed abattoir and cruelty to animals after he cut the throats of the four goats and allowed them to bleed to death in a house in Balloonagh, Tralee.

The police had been alerted to the incident by people living nearby who had heard the goats "screaming in pain". When they arrived, they found Rashid Kibaga and two other unidentified men who also lived at the Atlas House asylum seekers' hostel in Tralee.

Two of the animals had been skinned and another had been beheaded. The animal's head was lying on the ground near a number of knives and a large pool of blood. A fifth kid goat was found alive in a shed on the premises.

Animal welfare inspectors were called to the scene and took away the kid goat which was described as being in very poor condition. In their report they said that the goats "would have felt pain and been terrified" while being killed.

Mr Kibaga said that he had killed the animals in the ritual halal fashion not realising that it was against Irish law to treat animals like this. He had no previous criminal record.

Brian McInerny, acting for the defence, said that his client was a strict Muslim and this was the sort of thing he would have done all his life in Somalia. He had no idea it was illegal. He now accepts his actions were wrong and "apologises to the people of Ireland for offending them."

The judge in the case said that while he respected Mr Kibaga's religious beliefs, the law of the land had to be observed. He agreed with the defence barrister that a custodial sentence would not be necessary, even as a deterrent, as it was "unlikely that an outbreak of goat-slaying would break out in Tralee."

Poland votes to keep ban on religious slaughter

News | Mon, 15th Jul 2013

Despite pressure from religious groups and farmers, the Polish parliament has rejected a Government bill that would have lifted the ban on ritual slaughter of animals without pre-stunning. A religious exception to the rule was in place until January when it was overturned by a decision of the constitutional court.

The Government warned that the ban would have a drastic financial effect on the farming and meat industry, which drew large profits from exports of kosher and halal meat to Israel and the Middle East. It was these consideration that prompted the new proposals. Despite the country's dire economic state, the bill was rejected by 222 votes to 178 last Friday.

Large-scale protests on both sides of the debate were held in front of the Parliament building when the vote was taken. On one side were animal rights activists who argue the practice of ritual slaughter — which involves cutting the animal's throat while it is conscious and letting it bleed to death — is cruel, on the other side were the farmers who claimed their livelihoods were in danger.

Religious leaders were critical of the decision with Poland's chief rabbi claiming it infringed "the basic rights of the country's Jewish and Muslim populations, which will henceforth be forced to either buy more expensive imported meat, or endorse an enforced vegetarianism."

Despite the hundreds of millions of pounds it will cost the economy and the estimated loss of 6,000 jobs, the government says it will not try to bring the bill back to parliament.

The matter is likely now to be fought over in court. Already the Constitutional Tribunal has been asked to rule on whether the ban violates freedom of religion.

Human rights are for humans, not for ideologies

Opinion | Mon, 15th Jul 2013

A Jewish man has won an employment tribunal case for racial and religious discrimination after his employer made derogatory remarks about "Yids" and suggested that he would like to lock up and gas Jews.

Darren Feldman was bullied and abused by his manager because of his religion. He was driven out of his job by the boorish and racist attitudes of his manager.

He quite rightly used the law to gain some redress, and the equality regulations brought some kind of justice to him.

That is what the Equality Act is supposed to do. It is there to protect individuals like Mr Feldman from being persecuted and disadvantaged because of — among other things — their religion.

What it is not there for is to protect religious belief.

And that is where Mr Feldman's case differs so fundamentally from that of Lillian Ladele, the Islington registrar who wouldn't perform civil partnerships for gay couples.

Ms Ladele was not being bullied because of her religion, she was using her beliefs to create a confrontation with her employer that she hoped would result in Christianity being given a special status in her workplace. Her employer was simply asking her to carry out her duties in their entirety, just as her colleagues had to do.

This was not about her rights as an individual, it was about the right of her religion to be given special consideration that other ideologies cannot and must not have.

But human rights are for individual humans, they are not for ideologies or theologies. The Equality Act was put in place to protect individuals, not their beliefs.

If beliefs are protected, then who will defend individuals who contradict or fail to abide by those beliefs?

The evangelical groups who have driven this push for special rights for Christians in the workplace have tried to argue that a person is entitled to manifest their religion freely (which they are). But they want to redefine this right into the ability to take rights away from other people. Much to their frustration, the European Convention on Human Rights expressly forbids this.

Article 9 reads:

Freedom of thought, conscience and religion

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, and to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.

2. Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

The right to practice religion is guaranteed in every human rights charter ever written, but it is never an unrestricted right. It can't be or human rights would quickly become meaningless in the light of religious persecution of all kinds of people and minorities of whom the church or mosque didn't happen to approve. Unmarried mothers? Divorcees who want to remarry? Infidels and atheists?

The other day I was taking part in a debate on a Muslim TV channel with a young man who could not grasp this concept. Why couldn't there be an exception for Lillian Ladele, he wanted to know. Why were her rights to her religion less important than the rights of homosexuals? Why couldn't an exception have been made for her so that her religious conscience would be clear?

I asked how he would feel if a registrar was a member of the EDL who objected to dealing with Muslims? Would it be OK to make an exception for them? Would it be OK to exempt a racist who refused to deal with black people on the basis of their 'beliefs'? Or was it just gay people who deserved such degrading treatment? And just religion that deserves these special exemptions?

He was momentarily flummoxed but quickly went round in a circle and started to ask the same questions again.

The idea that human rights are there to protect individuals and not organisations or ideologies, is difficult for some people to grasp. But grasp it they must, for human rights are too important to be sacrificed on the altar of never-ending religious demands.

Free speech?

Opinion | Tue, 16th Jul 2013

The controversy arising from Rowan Atkinson's comic relief sketch back in March, in which he poked fun at the newly anointed Archbishop of Canterbury, has this month been cleared of breaking any broadcasting guidelines by Ofcom. However, it is a stark reminder of the precarious nature of free speech in the UK today — especially in instances where the subject of discussion is religion.

The controversy stems from the omission of the sketch on iPlayer of the comic relief show in response to the 2200 complaints received. When questioned on the absence of the sketch, the official response stated that the piece was problematic due to the 'subject matter' and the language used. It was pre-watershed so they '...took a swift decision to remove it from BBC iPlayer'. Given that the language issue could be neutralised by making use of the adult content warning on the iPlayer, one is forced to conclude the main reservation the corporation had was with the nature of the material.

Atkinson is no stranger to the fine line that humourists walk when working with potentially controversial subjects, in fact quite the opposite. He was an ardent critique of the Racial and Religious Hatred bill of 2006 becoming law. Recognising the curbs to freedom of expression it could have on satirists alone provided enough ground to be fearful on the wider social implications. Laying substance on his claims he cited sketches he himself had been involved with on programmes such as 'Not the Nine O'clock News' which could have been prosecuted if the bill had it been in law at the time. The self-censorship and restraint writers would be forced to employ could render religious institutions and beliefs immune to criticism or mockery, throwing the nation back to a time in which the enlightenment had simply never happened.

Such reservations were evidently felt in Parliament at this point as well, given that this was the third time in four years the government had tried to get such a piece of legislation though both houses. The bill itself sought to make an offence of inciting hatred of a person or community on the basis of their religion. While few would argue over the need to protect from and prevent the marginalisation and persecution of religious minorities, such a bill would clearly be detrimental to the nature of free speech within a healthy democracy, being described by Atkinson at the time as being akin to "using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut".

Any discussion over the point at which critical discussion, mockery and satire become bigotry and persecution is so evidently a mire of grey that one wonders how much faith to place in the way those required to enforce it would elect to. Set against the backdrop of the way in which Section 5 of the 1986 public order act was being readily invoked, a clause which outlawed harassing and/or causing alarm or distress to individuals or groups, such concerns were anything but groundless.

The infamous Section 5 clause, which has only very recently been revised, was being routinely used to make offences out of incident so innocuous they'd be laughable if they didn't carry such serious consequences. These include the arrest of an officers horse being called 'gay', and the case of a peaceful protester detained for holding a placard saying Scientology is a dangerous 'cult' — not that any complaints were raised about the sign by a member of the church, but an officer monitoring the protest who himself was not member of the faith saw fit to burden the insult he envisaged a member would have felt.

The point was in fact made at the time that both the Bible and the Qur'an would be in breach of the Religious Hatred bill if introduced, due to the incitement to violence various passages in each respective text demands of their followers. Such concerns, however, were ultimately rebuked as the Human Rights act of 1998 guarantees freedom of religion and self-expression, and accordingly any state encouragement to modify or omit any sacred texts would be in violation of this.

The bill ultimately became law in 2007, making a crime of anyone who "...uses threatening words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, is guilty of an offence if he intends thereby to stir up religious hatred." with the apparently aforementioned exemption afforded to religious texts. Despite the campaign against the enactment failing, it did achieve an late amendment stating it could not be used to "prohibit or restrict discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents..." in order to safeguard the perceived threat critiques were concerned would arise.

In spite of even these protections however, discussions of a religious nature – even in private — were demonstrated to be delicate as two hoteliers found in 2009 for suggesting the Muslim veil is oppressive to women and the prophet Mohammed was a 'warlord'. However ignorant one may consider such comments, merely having a conversation to illuminate, discuss and challenge such views saw the hoteliers being questioned by the police for potentially violating the act.

Things aren't all bleak though. Since the Racial and Religious Hatred bill went on to become law Blasphemy was taken off the books in England and Wales, though it remains in force in Northern Ireland. The campaign to reform Section 5, which Rowan Atkinson was again outspoken on, was successful and the amendments will become law later this year. And, as mentioned, Ofcom ruled this month, after 'careful consideration', that his Comic Relief Archbishop sketch wasn't breaking any of the broadcasting guidelines. Of more immediate concern is that such conversations need to take place on these matters at all by the regulator, and the level of capitulation broadcasters sink to when they fear religious sensibilities have been offended.

While it is impossible to measure the effect the Racial and Religious Hatred Act then had, and now has, on artistic self-censorship, it is against such a backdrop Atkinson's Archbishop Comic relief sketch was delivered. Though offensive to some, to the extent that warranted a phone call to Ofcom, it was relatively tame by his own standards. For example when comparing it to 'The Church's position on fellatio' sketch this piece was somewhat subdued, though still a few notches up from the 'Four Weddings and a Funerals' bumbling vicar.

The question one may wonder is the extent to which Atkinson was being deliberately provocative with his air time? But, when a situation exists where a comedian dressing up in a costume and poking fun at a major English institution may run afoul of legal protections afforded to its sector of society, one ought to commend him for bringing to the fore the ridiculous predicament such ill-conceived legislation can give rise to.

New exhibition to tell the story of Leicester Secular Society

News | Thu, 18th Jul 2013

A new exhibition is being planned to tell the story of Leicester Secular Society and its Hall through the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Society was one of the first groups in the UK to receive a Heritage Lottery Fund All Our Stories grant in November 2012.

The project, which Leicester Secular Society members have called For Truth's Sake, was given £8,910 to tell the Society's own story; to research and to invite participation from members of the public to come forward with their memories, stories, family connections with the Society, photographs or documents, to be shown in a new exhibition opening in September 2013.

Gillian Lighton, co-ordinator of the For Truth's Sake project said: "It's great that we've been awarded this grant. The Society has an amazing history and there's so much more to discover about our past. We are really excited about telling others about our findings and sharing our heritage and history with them."

Secular Hall, which has stood in Humberstone Gate since its opening on 6th March, 1881, is Grade 2 listed – one of the city's most significant Victorian edifices – and a uniquely important part of the country's cultural and historical heritage.

If you have any memories or memorabilia of the Society, or if you would like to take part in the research please contact eleanor.davidson@ntlworld.com or call 0116 2921964.

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